


The Flood

by secreterces5



Category: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Genre: Chrysalis being an emotional disaster, Cozy Glow being somewhat less of a bitch, Family Feels, Homesickness, Post-Episode: s09e08 Frenemies, Tirek being a very grumpy but ultimately okay guy, also Grogar fix your fucking house, although Grogar is just mentioned, imagine having a thousand minds ripped out of your life in half a minute, missing her family/hive, stormy night atmospere, they are very much a family and you canNOT tell me otherwise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 07:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19268500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secreterces5/pseuds/secreterces5
Summary: In a stormy night, three nostalgic creatures talk. And although they’ve found a better way to be bad, they’re not built from stone.





	The Flood

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I couldn’t NOT notice a friendship forming between three major villains (despite their denial and sour faces), I simply had to write about it. I don’t know where Grogar is while this story takes place and I don’t care :)

Grogar’s hiding place could be described in many ways. Mysterious. Frightening. Odd. Chrysalis personally thought it was also slightly tacky. According to Tirek’s judgement, it was a bit too small. Cozy Glow fond it fascinating, since it was after all a cave shaped as Grogar’s head and the small pegasus was very curious if he made it look that way or if he just had that much luck and found it.

But there was one thing Grogar’s home wasn’t: waterproof. And it had shown when the first autumnal rain came.

The young pink pegasus had awoken in the middle of the night into the clamour of a storm. She supposed the thunder had woken her up and didn’t plan on giving it much thought, nutil she realized how cold she was. Drowsilly, she lifted her head to look around just to yelp in surprise and jump off of her bed and into the air. There was so much water in her room it would reach up to her sides if she was standing on the ground. The matress she stole from the guardian of the mountain on their mission to retrieve Grogar’s bell was soaked and only because she was on an elevated place didn’t she drown yet.

Glow frowned. After all, she wasn’t going to sleep in a pool. For that reason, she had decided to go to the heart of the caverns, where, she hoped, it would be dry and warm or at least one of those. Unfortunately, she was bitterly disappointed, as the cave conjoining the whole complex had been flooding very similarly to her own room. The draft causing a howling of the wind to reverberate throughout the cave wasn’t helping anything. The only reason this room was better than her own was the gentle glow emanating from Grogar’s strange crystal ball. The little filly sighed and sat down on a stone table that wasn’t yet underwater. _At least it isn’t dark here. But what now?_ she pondered.

Maybe she could hide in someone else’s room? Her snout wrinkled at the thouht. Despite her attempts to at least partly bury the hatchet with Tirek and Chrysalis and despite them having a certain amount of respect to each other after the whole “retrieving Grogar’s bell” ordeal, she was sure neither of them would appreciate her waking them up in the middle of the night to ask if she could hide there until her room doesn’t look like a swimming pool. She counted Grogar out immediately, he’d probably stick her to a wall with that stupid magic of his and she’d catch a cold after a night spent on a wet rock, that didn’t seem worth it. So it came down to the minotaur and the queen of changelings.

Just when she was trying to figure out which one of them will more likely let her nap at their place, a sound of clopping hooves resonated nearby. According to the volume, Cozy Glow guessed it to be Chrysalis, but she was still surprised to see her. When the tall mare entered the main cavern and caught sight of the small pink pegasus, she raised an eyebrow: “What are _you_ doing here?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” the foal retorted.

The queen snorted. “That’s none of your business.”

“But it is still somehow _your_ business what _I_ am doing here?”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes: “Fine, don’t tell me then. I didn’t care anyways.”

Glow let out a quiet laugh: “Of course.”

In the oncoming silence, the two watched each other for a while, before Chrysalis settled down on the top of the walkway leading into the cave (she wasn’t too keen on approaching the water) and against a stone pillar. She looked tired, at least to Cozy Glow. She had dark circles under her emerald eyes and everyone now and then she let out a yawn, showing off her sharp jaws and forked tongue.

Another whiff of wind blew through the room and whined like a suffering wendigo. Glow shivered with chill and discomfort. She felt homesick, missing her warm room, maybe with her favourite plush toy, with a mug of hit cocoa… It was then that she had decided she needed to distract herself from her unenviable situation. “For real, Chrysalis, why are you sitting right over there? If I’m not mistaken, your cave is same from flooding and you look like you could really use some more sleep. So why are you trying to fall asleep on the stairs and not in your room?”

The changeling opened an eye and lazily looked her companion over. After a moment of mulling over whether she wants to converse with the child, Chrysalis answered: “It’s warmer here.”

“Yeah, like a degree or two warmer,” Cozy Glow sarcastically noted. “With all that power Grogar is supposed to have he could at least warm his home up. But why don’t you simply change into a bear, or a cat with long fur or something? You won’t be cold then, will you?”

For a while, she didn’t get any answer. Outside, another thunder roared and through the holes in the rock they both spotted lightning only a step from their hiding place. The pegasus then caught a glimpse of fear on the queen’s face, even if for just a second. She blinked in disbelief and then laughed: “Really? You’re scared of the storm?”

Chrysalis hissed at her, angrily: “I’m not scared of anything, you insolent brat!”

That only made Cozy Glow laugh louder. “Oh for goodness sake, you are! You, the queen of changelings, who not only once, but twice defeated the one and only princess Celestia, have a fear of storms! That is so… that is…” The filly wiped away tears of laughter. “That is hillarious.”

“I don’t fear the storm!” the insect–pony hybrid defended herself.

“Well, you definitely fear something related to the storm, can’t deny that anymore.”

“That’s falsehood! I– I–”

“Oh, look at yourself! She can turn into the biggest, most horrifying monsters of this world, but all it takes is one stormy night and she stutters like a nervous pre–schooler,” Cozy Glow grinned at her.

“Ugh, I hate being alone in the storm, alright?!” Chrysalis yelled suddenly.

The foal stopped in her taunting. Her brown and red eyes gazed at the black mare with surprise and also with a startling amount of sudden understanding. Immediately, Chrysalis realized what she had said, but it was too late to take it back.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, a new voice sounded from a different tunnel: “Well well, it seems that one learns something new everyday here.”

Chrysalis let out an annoyed groan.

Cozy Glow waved to the newcomer with a smile: “Hi, Tirek!”

The black and red minotaur entered the cave with a smug grin on his face. His yellow eyes immediately zeroed in on Chrysalis and in these eyes all she found was unmistakable mockery. “A fear of loneliness in a storm? How comes you have such an idiotic weakness?”

She growled at him. “Shut the hell up, Tirek. I don’t expect you to understand my reasons.”

“I don’t need reasons,” he scoffed in amusement. “But I’m glad I came to look for the reason Cozy Glow was laughing like a maniac, because the mental image of you shaking in fear of a storm is going to be stuck in my head and make me laugh for at least two millennia.”

“Is it because you miss your hive?” Glow interrupted the minotaur. When Chrysalis turned her head to look at her, she was pretty surprised to see her seize her taunting. Instead she was honestly curious and the queen decided that she can’t possibly worsen her situation anyway. And so, she spilled the beans: “Yes, I do miss my hive. There, I was always hidden from all of… this,” she pointed her holey hoof towards the darkness outside. “I used to have my young ones around me, I would talk with their caretakers, we had our own legends about how, when the weather was just like this, someone extremely powerful was battling the Sun, and Celestia.” She turned her gaze away so she wouldn’t have to look at the two creatures listening to her confession. She didn’t want to show how much the nostalgia over her subjects is devouring her. “I had a whole hive to share my thoughts with and listen to theirs, a whole hive full of creatures sticking together to survive. And when Starlight Glimmer convinced them all to take her side, all of a sudden I had to start hiding in the woods and caves… and spend stormy nights all alone. Why do you think I keep talking to dumb wooden logs? Because while you,” she nodded her head at Tirek, “are used to working alone, and you,” she waved at Cozy Glow, “are an egoistical brat and don’t get bothered by this, me… I’m not used to living without a thousand minds connected to mine. Laugh at that, if you really feel the need to.

They weren’t laughing. Cozy Glow looked almost saddened. And while Tirek approached the whole situation with much less empathy, at least he wasn’t making fun of Chrysalis anymore.

“I mean… it kinda annoys me too,” Cozy Glow murmured bashfully. “At home I had parents taking care of me, and a warm bad, and a whole room to myself where I had everything I had ever wanted, so sleeping in a cold cavern or a cage in Tartarus, for that matter, is definitely a step down. Not having Alice with me isn’t really helpful either…” To the questioning looks she replied: “It’s my plushie. And stop staring like that, I’m not a million years old like you two, I have a right to be a child, don’t I?”

Tirek rolled his eyes in a way that both his companions could see it. “For two of the most dangerous threats to Equestria, you’re unbelievably sensitive.”

Their glares told him to not test them.

“And you mean to tell me you don’t miss that brother of yours?” Chrysalis asked after a few seconds. “Weren’t you at all disappointed that he betrayed you, when you decided to steal all the equestrian magic?” She witnessed his hands curling into fists and his gaze dodging her eyes. “There you have it,” she said. “Not even you are built of stone, unlike this place.”

The atmosphere in the cave shifted. The silence ruling over it was no longer cautious and tense, but filled with sorrow for lost homes and lost power, which would usually silence the sorrow and distract them with other thoughts.

In the end, an annoyed grumble was heard and Tirek said with the biggest disgust in his voice possible: “If both of you really have that much of a problem with sleeping in your own rooms, you can rest next to my fireplace. It’s not even damp, it’s not dark and we all need to gather our strength.”

He hadn’t even finished the last sentence before Cozy Glow zipped by him: “Dibs on your blanket!”

The minotaur grunted angrily, but Chrysalis’ silent giggle interrupted him. He turned to her and nonchalantly commented: “The moment I take over, I’ll burn that pegasus to ashes and drown you in repellent.”

Chrysalis flew over to his side of the cavern and walked past him. “Of course, you sensitive, sensitive creature. I think you meant to say ‘when Chrysalis takes over,’” she grinned slyly.

Ahead of them, they heard: “Ha! Without my strategy and knowledge, you’ll both be about as useful as a fifth wheel! In the end, you’ll both be working for me!”

All of them knew that if they succeed in using Grogar’s bell to their advantage, a battle between them will be inevitable. They were ready to fight for their own selfish goals and desires and all three of them were sure they’d be the ones leaving that battle as winners. But that was still in the future. For now, they could still allow themselves to rest around one fireplace, because for now they needed each other.

And maybe, just maybe they were grateful to have someone, who understood. To know they weren’t all alone in this whole mess. But not the mighty Tirek, not the royal Chrysalis and not the cunning Cozy Glow, none of them would ever admit that.


End file.
